Viagra Safe for Most Men With Heart Disease
March 19, 2001 (Orlando, Fla.) -- OK, to recap: When Viagra was introduced, there were reports that the anti-impotence drug could be dangerous if taken by men with heart disease, particularly those who were on nitrate drugs. Those fears seem to be fading as recent research counters the early findings.
In fact, two new studies presented here Monday at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology (ACC) suggest that Viagra could help the heart and blood vessels work more effectively during times of physical demand, such as sexual intercourse. What's more, a third study makes the case that the drug may never have been as bad for the ticker as initially thought.
What this amounts to "is further evidence that Viagra is a very safe drug to use for most people," says a member of the ACC panel that issued recommendations in 1999 on the use of Viagra in patients with heart disease.
"We used to think that it wasn't a good idea to give it to men who were taking multiple [drugs to treat high blood pressure], but now after our experience with millions of patients, the only absolute contraindication is in men who are on nitrates," says Adolph M. Hutter Jr., MD, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a specialist in cardiovascular medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, both in Boston.
"Men should not use Viagra for 24 hours before or 24 hours after taking nitrates," Hutter tells WebMD.
In the first study presented at the ACC conference, Charalambos Vlachopoulos, MD, and colleagues from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, randomly assigned 27 men in their late 60s and 70s to receive either Viagra or an identical but inactive placebo. The researchers then looked at the stiffness of the men's arteries -- the stiffer the artery, the harder the heart has to work to pump blood out of its chambers.
They found the drug made the arteries significantly more flexible and lowered blood pressure both when the heart was at work and at rest. This led them to conclude that the drug "may contribute to improved exercise capacity of the patient [during] intercourse."